I work for a science research discovery platform that allows users to group and share articles intuitively, then leverages machine learning to provide them with recommendations. At its core, our mission is to make science more accessible by improving the access experience: in other words, to help level the playing field when it comes to public engagement with science, a field which for decades (if not centuries) has been stubbornly tilted in favour of those with significant levels of both education and money. Our problem? Plenty of the articles we index require a fee to be read in full. How can we level anything when the scientific publishing industry insists on stacking up the field against us?Many of our users are PhDs and postdocs; not only highly educated in the subject they’re researching, they’re also almost certainly affiliated with an institution that provides free journal access. Whilst open access is no less important for this group, to ensure that the most fruitful collaborative work can take place, the users who are left behind from the start are those we term ‘citizen scientists’. These are members of the public who are less likely to be familiar with the vocabulary of the subject they have set out to research, who almost certainly do not have paid access to subscription journals, and who may be seeking out research for personal reasons, such as to find out more about a recent diagnosis for themselves or for a loved one, to help them decide on a field of future study, or simply for personal interest. They're stuck at the lowest end of the playing field. The problem with open access, the argument goes, is that it’s useless: citizens who do not hold advanced degrees need scientific training to understand the articles in the first place. Yet fostering an ‘open culture’ will build public scientific literacy from the ground up by encouraging people to inform themselves about science from primary sources. And - to co-opt the slogan that decorates a building not far from our offices in Shoreditch, London - more scientific literacy, more power. The effects of a cultural sea change like this could be dramatic. Nature called the impact of releasing papers to the public “astonishing”, apparently surprised that anybody not holed up in an ivory tower would have any interest in research that is ostensibly done for the good of the public. The shock that public engagement actually works isn’t new: consider the resurgence of citizen science, a flourishing movement borne of scientists’ realisation that patterns or anomalies in data might just as well be spotted by laypeople as by trained scientists, which has produced democratic and cultural movements to the surprise of many of its practitioners. Steven Bishop writes how citizen science not only permits but delights in the participation of those who do not fit inside the narrow categories of "affluent, literate and educated". Perhaps scientific publishing has something to learn from this radical ethos - and its radical success.Concretely, what could an open culture do for us? A lot, is the answer. Pupils at schools too underfunded to afford journal subscriptions could nevertheless be introduced to advanced science and scientific inquiry, helping to shape their powers of critical thought in a critical age - maybe even giving them the tools to begin contributing to science, and by doing so to start fighting the systemic inequality that continues to plague it. Would-be higher education students unable to afford university fees could take their education into their own hands by learning for themselves what was previously hidden behind a paywall too high to scale without institutional help. Any person able to read about science for themselves is far less likely to be duped by ‘fake news’, a tide that threatens, however distantly, to engulf rational inquiry. The spread of open culture - a different kind of tide - would begin to beat at the barriers that have stood for centuries between academia and the public, barriers that have largely served only to increase resentment and distrust of science itself. Open scholarship raises the bar that sets our preconceptions about what science and its practitioners should look like, and invites us to join it. It hints at a world where researchers, far from being forced to chase economic stability or arbitrary impact factors, can pursue research for knowledge’s sake: research from which members of the public can directly, explicitly benefit. Open begins to level out the playing field.

Unlike business content or political content, which serves certain people's purpose and is appropriate in the context of specific location and time, scientific content is supposed to be universally applicable. Thus access to scientific content may differ from access to business or political contents.

Opposite to the open access model is regulated access, in which case, the access platform owners put certain rules on accessible scientific content. As owners are often in some business, their rules reflect those businesses.

One example is general interest. In politics, general opinion decide, in science, majority thinking may not be relevant. Who is interested in a particular research result is not an integral part of that result.

Another example is importance. Many owners hold the belief that their platforms are important, so are the works recorded in their platform, but self claimed importance is not really important, the place where scientific results are accessible is not science by itself. A platform can be important only if it helps people accessing scientific results easier.

A third example is urgency. As a prerequisite, scientific results must have lasting value. So it does not matter much when a result is accessible, whether some years earlier or later.

Science, in its raw form, is only about what is universally true, while who, where and when are at most business aspects of a scientific result. In normal development of scientific research, the result was first obtained, then made accessible to others, so that it could go through independent checks, its universal applicability is established during repeated independent tests. Within the process, accessibility is only one step, no result becomes science immediately when it is made accessible by some platform. The primary scientific activity includes hard work to obtain the result prior to accessibility, and subsequent repeated independent checks that eventually decide the true value of the result. Only after those scientific activity can the proved validity give rise to business values, i.e. universally valid results are pertinent to everyone (general interest, important) so that people should know it earlier (urgency).

As the universal validity of a result can only be established after accessibility followed by repeatable independent checks, talking about the business value of a result prior to the accessible time is premature and likely misleading. Unfortunately, these business aspects are regularly asked by platform owners in decision on accessibility, which often dilute, and sometimes even displace the scientific value of a result. While readers are often distracted from scientific value by those business value, accessibility of raw research is made artificially troublesome for authors.

In addition, the original writing of a scientific result represents the genesis of that result, thus serves as the birth record of that result. Due to the long lasting value of a scientific result, its birth record, as manifested by the original writing, bears value that is absent from business augmented writings.

The emphasis on business value is hard to avoid on a regulated platform as the platform is indeed a business. On the other hand, open access model, by definition, looks promising in bypassing premature requirement of business value. In fact, universality implies openness as both are free of business impact of a particular party. In an open model, accessibility becomes easy, so both readers and authors will focus more on the raw universal value of scientific results. In that sense, open access in science is close to free speech in politics, as it provides equal opportunity for each result.

It would be interesting to see how open access contributes to the advancement of science. If luckily, someone will be able to afford such a trial.

Being South East (SE) Asian, Indonesian, one of the biggest obstacle is the feeling of inferiority. Academically, by any means we’re behind, mainly due to language barrier in writing and speaking in English.

English-based papers written by Indonesian, have not yet been largely published in the so called reputable journals. Our rejection rate is rocketing", based on individual interview with many Indonesian scientists. But yet, I haven’t found any published data on this matter. That doesn’t mean we only produce low quality research. Many manuscripts are rejected even before being sent for peer review due to poor language. In the other hand, copy editing fee is way out of our project fund limit.

But with the inclusive spirit of open science, seemingly the inferior feeling transforms into positive energy to publish in our mother language. Just recently, DOAJ released a fantastic figure that papers written in Indonesian language is the 6th worldwide and journal registration increases 111% in 2017 compare to last year. Most of the journals are fully managed and written in Indonesian language.

Congratulations to Dasapta Erwin Irawan, winner of our competition for "Openness for the inferior: a view from Indonesian Scientist"! Dasapta won with 237 of 545 votes cast online. A close second were Marina Lubenow & Jens Crueger with their entry "Open in order to think multidisciplinary!" See the full results below.

Many thanks to all of our excellent entrants!

Entry

Votes received

Dasapta Erwin Irawan, "Openness for the inferior: a view from Indonesian Scientist"

Often when we think about Science qua Science, it’s an inspirational pursuit of knowledge and the foundation of human progress and prosperity. Looking around at the advances in technology and modern medicine, it is truly amazing that this system for exploration that has uncovered gravitational waves, decoded the human genome, and has made possible the life that we live through technology and medicine. While maintaining this sense of importance and awe, scientists themselves have a unique perspective perhaps contrasting the positive aesthetic due to its day-to-day implementation. The research process is a slow one with failing experiments, replicated studies, and detailed protocols needing development or optimization. However disheartening, it’s an unavoidable part of how scientific discoveries are made. But science is not an isolated system, and researchers rely heavily on the past bodies of work to glean insight into how a new system functions, follow up on past findings, or mimic a particular protocol. Frequently reading or skimming tens to hundreds of articles while planning an experiment or writing a manuscript, the attributes of published scholarly literature is the cornerstone of doing science. Having the techniques and data analysis procedures explicit, along with the subsequent critique from the larger science community (especially peer reviewer comments), would optimize the process of science itself at a granular but compoundingly massive scale.Online journals have allowed for the acquisition of massive amounts of information and opened the space for extensive detail within a publication (however traditional) along with appending a supplemental information, typically found separate to the main article. Despite this, many details and specifics about the scientific procedure remain lacking. Instead, these sections typically contain peripheral experiments that don’t have enough wow-factor to make it in the main body. These are important but do not always highlight methodology or data analysis procedures.Methods sections themselves should describe the actions taken to investigate the system of interest. They need to address research design, experimental protocols, preparation of sample, instrumentation, and data analysis procedures. Along with this, the justification and rationale of why these protocols and analyses were specifically chosen should be included to round out and fill in the context and relate them to the whole study.The type of content should be as explicit as possible such that another researcher can follow instructions and, provided the method was fully transparent and both researchers did it correctly, to ensure that the same conclusions can be made. However, if the data from the two replicate experiments does not match, instead of assuming inherent flaws in the enterprise of science, it means the system of interest may be more complicated than anticipated. In this case, there’s an unknown part within the experiment that is not being controlled for – luckily scientists are trained to be curious and determine what’s going on. But the credibility of these further studies rests initially upon the transparency of the methodology.Similarly, the subsequent overt and visible critique by the wider scientific community on the methods, data, and analysis within a published product would further bolster the credibility and optimization of the scientific process. When determining if a study is useful, convincing, and ultimately worthwhile, there is an element of critical thinking required on the reader’s part but the backing of the rest of the community would further support the decision. A metric that’s commonly used to determine the usefulness of a research study is the number of citations. The reuse of a particular citation is sort of an inherent form of peer review, as it suggests that the broader group finds it valuable. But this form of indirect validation does not address any explicit critiques or impacts of the particular study that inform subsequent experimentation.Providing a space alongside the publication is a potential solution that allows for open, honest dialog with the submitted manuscript. In the current infrastructure, this looks something like open peer review where, along with the paper itself, viewers could also see the evaluations the experts had on first glance of the manuscript and determine if critiques were addressed. The addition of this, without any extra labor on the reviewer’s end, allows scientists to analyze the paper themselves to gain additional insight into the work, further influencing the future of their experimentation and of science itself. Exposing and adding transparency to the most fundamental processes of science - the methodology and the analytical critique - will serve key roles in bettering future research practices as a result.

Essay prompt: What concrete benefits can be realized by making scholarly research outputs openly available?

NONE. ABSOLUTELY NONE. Making scholarly research outputs openly available - pffft, are you daft!? Under the benevolence of our grand vizier, and for the good of humanity, research outputs have always been stashed out of sight. In a decompression chamber somewhere. Under lock and key. Cryonized for all eternity. Why mess with a winning formula?

If you make it open, people might start reading that stuff, rather than sticking to the headline in the press release or the artwork on the cover, and where is that going to lead us? We don't have time to read anymore! No, that's true, we have the attention span of a goldfish, everyone says so - I read it on @IFLScience. Who needs the aggravation? I'll tell you what: some papers have titles that are so long that by the time I get to the end of it (the title, that is), I'm exhausted. As far as I'm concerned, if someone has to say 'carassius auratus' instead of 'goldfish' to feel important, they deserve to have their paper locked away under two locks and two keys! I can only do so many roundtrips to Wikipedia before I start getting thirsty.

If you make it open, people might start questioning what they read too, and that's just rude. You don't go around poking and sniffing all the melons at the produce stand to see which ones are ripe, do you? You do? Well, that's an unhealthy habit, stop it.

And I'm asking you: what are people going to do with all their money if they're not subscribing to expensive journals anymore? They're going to go on vacation to a lavish conference, like OpenCon, and stop doing science, that's what. You can't tell me that's good for science. What's that? They can spend that same amount of money to list their papers as openly available?

Why do I do Open?

I do Open because I care about science belonging to everyone. I'm and academic and I think the emphasis that Open is to benefit academics (more citations, greater visibility, etc.) misses the main point, which is that we are funded by the world to do science that the world directly benefits from.

There have been three great open initiatives in the last century that I have followed:

Free and Open Source. Stallman and Torvalds

The World Wide Web. Berners-Lee and the immense contribution of the IETF

The human genome project. Sulston and Collins

All of these have massively influenced my approach to Open and act as the ideal for collaborative communal action. I have contributed Open Source over 20 years and have both benefitted and benefitted others. It's a gift economy that works well, that companies have signed up to and that funders support. If any of these three had been closed the world would have been immeasurably poorer, often leading to control by commercial organisations

The benefits are many - the main ones are:

building on the work of others and being built on.

permanent archiving immediate discovery of resources

permanent archival and high-quality searching

immediate validation and correction of my work (Continuous Integration, etc.)

Open Access today

I had hoped that "Open Access" as visioned in the BOAI would parallel Open Code and Open Bioscience. In practice, for me, current Open Access has not delivered its promise and is not likely to in the next decade - there is too much fragmentation, open-washing, timidity, and restrictive practices. 15 years after BOAI I cannot go to a single point -of-contact and ask to download all Open Access papers (which is what I wish to do).

I can download some subsets - most notably EuropePMC - and my non-profit organization Contentmine.org does this every day. We've worked with Wikimedia (Wikidata) to create WikiFactmine which aims to index all publica science against Wikidata (a collection of nearly 40 million facts). 15% of Wikidata is now the WikifactMine list of Open Access papers. A partial success for Open Access, making the science effectively available to the whole world, not just academics.

But vast swathes of chemistry, materials, engineering are effectively closed. So yes, WikiFactMine is a partial success for Open Access and is only

F/OSS Software is developed in public view - warts and all. Why not science thought one visionary chemist, Jean Claude Bradley, whom I knew well and collaborated with. J-C's vision was that scientists should do all their work in public view and post their results as soon as they got them. His motto "No insider knowledge" requires that any reader should know as much about the experiment as as the scientists who did this. It is Open by design .

J-C developed this with young chemists, often undergraduates, measuring solubilities and publishing them immediately. The Open approach has an immediate effect on quality. People are often happy to expose their work, but they are not happy to expose palpably sloppy science. I contend that

Open Notebook Science mean Better Science

and this is the primary benefit. I've been through this myself and I feel the pressure always to be better, more organized, more thorough - to show work I am proud of.

This doesn't mean that you have to get it right first time. For 30 years F/OSS has accepted that buggy code is fine and that it will be gradually improved. Similarly for science - experiments often go wrong and need repeating, and we should glory in this, not pretend that it's private until it's "publishable". There are an increasing number of Open Notebook practitioners and I'll just highlight one - Mat Todd and colleagues in Sydney who run Open Source Malaria. :

Guided by open source principles, everything is open and anyone can contribute.